By: Justine Axelsson
Posted In: News
Photo credit: Pell Center
Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire, Commander of the United Nations Mission to Rwanda in 1994, will visit Salve on Monday March 27 to deliver a lecture.
The Rwandan genocide happened 12 years ago, yet it is still consuming the minds of people in the Salve Regina community who ask how our government and the human race let it happen, and more importantly, what they are doing to prevent such horrific events from taking place in the future.
One of the people that the Salve community, namely, the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, has turned to in the face of such questions is Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire. After 35 years in the Canadian Armed Forces, Dallaire served as the Force Commander of the United Nations Mission to Rwanda in 1994, and experienced first hand, the failure of humanity to stop the worst genocide of the 20th century, as 800,000 people were murdered in the course of 100 days. Though the mission failed, Dallaire’s courage and leadership in the face of such a tragedy have earned him international respect and admiration. On Sunday March 26, the Pell Center, in cooperation with the Newport International Film Festival, will show a 91-minute documentary film entitled, “Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire.” The documentary, which will be shown at 5:00 p.m. in the Pell Center ballroom, follows Dallaire, who is accompanied by his wife Elizabeth, as he returns to Rwanda in 2004, 10 years after the genocide. Then, on Monday March 27, the Pell Center and Salve Regina University will proudly host Lieutenant General Dallaire himself. Dallaire will give a public lecture titled, “The Failure of Humanity to Stop Genocide,” at 6:00 p.m. in the Bazarsky Lecture Hall in the O’Hare Academic Center. The lecture is free and open to the public, however, the Pell Center is asking that those who plan to attend please RSVP by e-mail to pellcenter@salve.edu or by telephone to (401) 341-2927 by noon on Monday March 26. As a university community that fosters the importance of global awareness and encourages its students to ask questions in order to become informed citizens, one of the steps that it has taken to do so was to offer the current course on Rwanda. However, by having Lt. General Dallaire come to campus and speak, the university is reaching beyond the classroom and giving the entire school and community a chance to see that one person really can make a difference. Aida Neary, office manager of the Pell Center said, “We want people to be inspired by Dallaire and his actions, and we want them to walk out not feeling helpless.”
